MUST... HAVE... BEEEEEEEF!

Masaaki Mori entered the Kamisu branch of the the international beef bowl chain at about 9:30 a.m. He ordered a bowl of gyudon, but was turned down as the restaurant had stopped serving the dish at 2 a.m. due to short supply of cheap beef due to the mad cow disease case in the United States. He allegedly became irate, pounding the table and screaming, "What kind of gyudon shop doesn't serve gyudon?" He allegedly hit two customers in the face after they told him to behave. He also pulled a customer's hair, police said.

"What kind of gyudon shop doesn't serve gyudon?" You have to admit it's a damn good question.

WHAT IF IT'S ALL A BIG FAT LIVER?

California's Senate President Pro Tem John Burton is preparing a bill that would prohibit the production and sale of foie gras. Burton's bill would ban the method of feeding the birds with a pipe, connected to an overhead funnel, that is inserted down the birds' throats to pump in food. Standard practice in the industry, the method usually lasts for the two weeks before the bird is slaughtered. "I mean, would you like somebody cramming food down your throat?" Burton, D-San Francisco, said Tuesday. "We're checking it out." Burton doesn't believe the practice is necessary. "It seems kind of ... weird, you know?" Burton said.

HUMANS MORE AT RISK FROM BIRD FLU

WHO Warns Humans May be Increasingly at Risk for Bird Flu says Voice of America, while the International Herald Tribune points out that Some Asian countries as well as Poland were banning U.S. poultry imports after the outbreak of a strain of avian influenza discovered last week at a Delaware farm. It's not the same strain as that in the Far East, but that doesn't mean it's safe.

UPDATE 2/12: Bird flu found at live chicken markets in NJ. In another classic scenario, there's no way of finding out where the birds came from.
UPDATE 2/16 Now it's in Pennsylvania, too.

ATKINS WAS OBESE, HAD HEART DISEASE

Gosh, is Mayor Bloomberg gonna get an apology now? Atkins wasn't just "fat," he was "obese" (258 lbs.) by the time he died, according to the medical examiner's report upon his death. Atkins-olytes are trying to spin it that he "gained more than 60 pounds through fluid retention in the eight days he spent in a coma," and that he only weighed 195 when admitted. Guess it's possible, but even if that were true, 195 is "overweight," which is a nice way of saying what Bloomberg said: Fat.

UPDATE 2/11: An Australian paper's priceless hed (if you're familiar with Gary Taubes): DIET GURU BIG FAT LIAR

MAD COW TEST LAB COVERING UP MORE CASES?

Again pushing the envelope of the Mad Cow story, UPI's Steve Mitchell reports that the single lab in Ames, Iowa that does all the USDA's BSE testing "has a history of producing ambiguous and conflicting results" according to disillusioned USDA veterinarians, and "has been so secretive some suspect it is covering up additional mad cow cases." Most of the vets, of course, are unnamed, though one who is named confirms that "There's definitely issues" with the validity of NVSL test results, and recounts a couple of odd, disconcerting incidents. It could all be a fantastical coincidence, I guess, but it seems like the USDA has just about used up their quota of those.

ALL'S WELL THAT ENDS... WELL,...

USDA Concludes Mad Cow Search. Yep, they found all the other cows that were at risk. Or, at least, well, 14 of the 25 that definitely ate the same feed that gave December's Mad Cow the disease. And a whopping 29 out of 81 from that farm, all of which the agency was searching for. And see, "Some may have gone to slaughter, but BSE tests would have spotted any that had mad cow," Ron De Haven said. Sure they would've - if all Mad Cows are downers, right?

UPDATE 2/10: "The investigation is not completed, it just failed" - that's one guy's opinion, of course. Unfortunately, that one guy is Tadashi Sato, agricultural attache at the Japanese Embassy.
UPDATE 2/11: There's another guy who thinks the investigation is incomplete - Tom Daschle, who wants the search reopened. "In comments on the Senate floor, Daschle blamed pressure from meatpackers and the cattle industry for the government's decision to close its investigation on Monday." Really. Huh.